Patrick Chan keeps getting more and more annoying, on and off the ice. After being awarded 2 world titles he didn't deserve, I hope he finishes 4th next year in Sochi.

What did he do now?

Originally Posted by Ziggy

This way you are punishing the skaters twice. Elements are elements, presentation is presentation. (About PCS to be more affected by falls)

I disagree. Elements are the substantial part of presentation. Thus, if a skater fails on an element, it should be affected in PCS.

Originally Posted by Ziggy

But if a skater falls yet still presents their program well I don't see any reason to deduct on the PCS.

Please define: 'if a fall does not affect the performance, there is no reason to deduct from PCS'. Where do you draw that line? It is obvious to me that it leaves room for judges to hold/low label skaters. Some would justify that the fall did not affect the performance, some would state otherwise. To me, a fall ALWAYS affects the performance, no matter how great your skate was. If you skate one of the greatest programs ever, but you fell/had a step out/you name it, I won't give you a perfect 10 for PCS. 9.75 maybe. But not 10.
One of the PE criteria is precision of execution. If you fell, you were not precise. It should be reflected in PCS.

Originally Posted by Ziggy

Everybody would start skating conservative simple programs because taking risks would be too costly. You would be trying to make sure you never fall.
I don't want skating to be safe and conservative. I want it to take risks and excite.

But maybe it would be better for the sport if skaters started putting into their programs what they REALLY can execute well, instead of risking elements that they rarely succeed with? This would increase the quality of performances and it would leave audience more pleased. On the other hand, if you can execute difficult elements, then you won't have problems with including them into your programs. Taking risks when most of the time it equals failure is not excitement any more..
Additional 'punishment' for mistakes in PCS would encourage quality, I believe!

Originally Posted by VIETgrlTerifa

I don't see why punishing skaters twice is so bad in itself. You have to look at whether the proposed deductions for major mistakes are going to be more accurate in reflecting what the skater produced over what we have now.
I just it's funny that some are so nonchalant about big falls in a routine (and multiple falls) and can live with a performance that is mired in them winning a competition, but once you talk about underrotation and fluting or lipping, then it's the end of figure skating.
I mean, is anyone complaining that transitions are basically being rewarded twice (in jump GOE and in a separate category in PCS)?

Well said.

Originally Posted by jamie

Essentially the judges are saying, I can see that you have great Skating skills, even though you fell. By that logic, they may aswell go to the practice sessions and mark the jumps based on the overall capabilities of the skaters.

I agree. It counts what you present on ice THAT night. If you fell, had other glaring mistakes on landings, etc etc it should reflect bunch of judging criteria: TES, skating skills, PE.

Originally Posted by Mathman

To me, this says that the problem is not with the annual tweaks but with the basic concept itself. If figure skating is not "that kind of sport'" (the kind where your performance is measured according to what you deliver on that particular evening), then why go through the charade of assigning points as if it is?

Mathman, you never stop to amaze me. You always phrase everything so perfectly, logically and concisely.

Originally Posted by phaeljones

Chan does not have to work harder unfortunately. That is the message. Just do two perfect quads and the rest can be total garbage.

I would not worry that much. He almost lost to Denis Ten, so I actually think he got a different message: Please, work on you programs, execute them clean, because if Hanyu or Dai or Fernandez have a better competition, overcome their injuries/whatever issues and they skate the lights out, you are not going to win.

I'm really "angry" at Patrick. He had all the opportunity to shine in that LP. He had all the opportunity to make it his night. He could do justice to this wonderful program. He could prove that this LP is very artistic and that he is artistic. He wasted that opportunity. He allowed all his haters to tear him apart. :( Such a shame!!

Some math that might temper the Chan/Ten debate a bit. Focusing purely on jumps (since that seems to be the issue, and their spins/footwork were comparable in value/execution):

In the FS: Ten's jumps' base value = 58.13; Chan's jumps' base value = 61.28
So, already, Chan has a 3 point margin up on him (and this is considering axel downgrade and the like). 2 points of that is lost on Chan's two falls.
Chan is now up 59.28 to 58.13, on jump base value.

Now we'll consider GOE deductions. The jumps Chan messed up rightfully had GOE deductions, of -3's for the falls (a loss of -2.1 for the 3Z, and -3 for the 3A), and -2's (a loss of -1.3) for the 3F-3S sequence (which, btw was an error but scored similar to Ten's 3-jump sequence because of its higher difficulty). So now, going off the errors Chan gets -6.4 points. So now it's Ten with 58.13 and Chan with 52.88. A difference of 5.25 points.

So if we take deductions into account, Ten now has a jumps point advantage of 5.25 points.

Now we'll consider GOE bonus for successfully completed jumps. Ten (having more cleaner jumps) gets a bonus of 8.88 points. However, even with 4 problematic passes, Chan gets a bonus of 7.16 points, thanks mainly due to his quads.... a difference of 1.72. So based on jump bonuses, Ten has widened his advantage to 6.97 points.

Now here's the critical bit, note that Ten not only didn't do a 3F, he had also could have done a 3F-3T, so instead of 10.34 points he only did a 2F-2T combo worth 3.41 points -- and left 6.93 points on the table. (Yes, Chan also left 4 points on the table by not doing a 3T on the end of his 2Z, although that would have been a split second decision and he's always trained his combo with a 2T.. whereas Ten wouldn't have risked Zayaking if either one of his 2F-2T was made into a triple, and has quite likely trained that combo with a 3T to max his program. The point is that Ten could have added a 3T onto his flip, but downgrading both the 3F and 3T cost him much more than Patrick downgrading his 3Z to a double). So essentially, Ten gave up his entire jumping advantage by not doing the 3F-3T.

And with comparable spins/footwork, you're left with PCS to determine who had the better skate. Chan had 2.12 points better PCS (this is arguably a fair margin because Chan's program is way better than Ten's but was skated technically poorly while Ten had no glaring errors... in reality, had Chan skated well, he would have cleared 90 points of PCS and had around a 4 point PCS gap over Ten... (btw Chan's personal best PCS mark in the FS is 3.5 points higher than what he got in this FS).

This 2 point PCS gap closes Ten's advantage to 4.85 points -- this is about the score he beat Patrick in the FS by 5.5 points (Ten was slightly better in terms of spins/footwork GOE -- including +3s almost across the board for his ChSp footwork, while Chan got mainly +2's).

Now you look back to the SP, which was pretty close -- I would say due to a superior program (plus better spins, a harder lutz vs. flip, and the greater difficulty in tacking on the 3T to the quad), Patrick deserved about a 6 or 7 point victory over Ten. Neither of them deserved 91 and 98 points, but I think 88 and 95 would have been fine with people. So the margin of victory in the SP for Chan is enough to make up for Ten's technical superiority in the freeskate.

Thus, Patrick won due to regaining points for his falls with quality quads, due to several points left on the table from Ten's 3-3, due to a considerable lead in the SP (which was the right margin, IMO, just 2-3 points higher than either deserved), and due to his chief rivals faltering in the SP and not really bringing in the LP either.

^ Well...what you did here is tally up all the points on the protocol sheets. No one is contesting the computer's ability to add.

I think the complaint is rather, points, schmoints. We just saw Ten clean Chan's clock. Yet the protocol sheets say otherwise. Something is wrong here. Adding and re-adding the same numbers will not get to the bottom of the problem. (JMO.)

Denis Ten arrived back home. What a little "crowd" met him there. He said he was always dreaming about competing at the highest world level and winning the medal. He is very happy that he won the small gold medal in FS at Worlds:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcyQit2Xe3s

I think the complaint is rather, points, schmoints. We just saw Ten clean Chan's clock. Yet the protocol sheets say otherwise. Something is wrong here. Adding and re-adding the same numbers will not get to the bottom of the problem. (JMO.)

I have no problem with raising fall penalty and making the multi-fall skaters harder to win the whole competition. But, Math, I think many people who complain about this have forgotten how high Patrick Chan's PCS could be if he skated perfectly clean. I have no doubt that he would get multi 10s in PCS, and rightfully.

I look at it this way. The program components are supposed to reflect the whole program, not just the part of the program between elements.

Jumps are choreographic punctuation marks and highlights to the musical interpretation. If you flub the spotlight moments of your choreography, that should be reflected in the choreography score. You did not deliver the choreography that was planned.

Likewise, in performance/execution, you did not execute your program, and - because of falls and other awkward moments -- you did not draw the audience in to your performance. You did not weave a spell of music and movement. This ought to be reflected in P&E as well as in Choreography and interpretation.

In this particular performance Patrick skated a 10 for the first minute, then a 4 for the rest. In addition to the falls it was lackluster and without pizzazz or grace.

Don't get me wrong. When Patrick is on, he's fantastic. But this was a forgettable year for him, and a forgettable performance. Hope he does better next year.

Chan won because of the current system. If you mark each category and total both programs all together he won. You are going to have to change the system if you want a different result but remember in years past Lambiel and Buttle have been held up because of their pcs - held up in a good way like Chan they earne dtheir marks in other categories. But once again skating is still subjective the idea of cop was to reward what you do otherwise we can have safer programs maybe figure skating should be pulled a sa judged sport. Like parents with little kids fighting if you cannot get along and behave then maybe the toy, the game should be taken away. Would that make you all happy.

Chan won because of the current system. If you mark each category and total both programs all together he won. You are going to have to change the system if you want a different result but remember in years past Lambiel and Buttle have been held up because of their pcs -held up in a good way like Chan they earne dtheir marks in other categories. But once again skating is still subjective the idea of cop was to reward what you do otherwise we can have safer programs maybe figure skating should be pulled a sa judged sport. Like parents with little kids fighting if you cannot get along and behave then maybe the toy, the game should be taken away. Would that make you all happy.

Can you name a single competition in which Lambiel and Buttle skated as poorly as Chan did in the LP and still won?

Mathman, you are spitting into the wind. He will never concede that Chan didn't deserve that win, nor that his artistry isn't the finest thing on ice since John Curry, even on an off performance. Never.

After rewatching Patrick's and Denis' free skates, I do not change my initial notion that PChiddy fully deserves his title. If anyone received the most inflated score and was most held up by the judges in this competition, it's Denis not Patrick.